Fire
by LollipopVanity
Summary: Fire oft symbolizes purification. Purification of one's soul and spirit, a change in character and outlook.
1. The Portrait

The burning portrait of her father proved distraction enough to pause her. Canvas paper curls black around his face, and she fears it to be an omen. Finding Oren and Oriana pooled in blood was devastating and reason enough to want Howe dead, but this… This was infuriating. This was her home, her entire life now uprooted by the man they once called friend. Cecilia's hand tightens around the hilt of her dagger as she stares down at the burning portrait.

"Darling." Eleanor rouses her attention behind her. "We'll find him."

The fire burned on throughout the night.


	2. The Nightmare

The first night the nightmares struck, Cecilia stayed awake well past everyone else. She sat at the end of her bed roll, arms hugging her knees to her chest, and watched the fire pit dance under the cooking pot still full of boiling water. It bred tranquility to see the blend of oranges and reds in constant feast, to hear the wood snap under its weight, and feel the warmth on her face in contrast to the freezing on her back. Silently, she nestled the lower half of her face behind her knees.

_"Of course, then I'd be dead, too. It's not like that'd make him any happier."_

She decided, then, that she was in favor of the cold. After turning over the pot and dousing the flames, she fell against the bedroll and dreamed of more dragons.


	3. Inebriated

"Has anyone ever told you how handsome you are?" The question is slurred and blunt, nothing at all like the curt eloquence he's used to from her.

"Not unless they were asking me for a favor… -Are you drunk?" He can't help the laugh at the end of his own question.

"Inebriated."

"There's a difference?"

"I…don't know," she admits, gaze falling to the shadows flickering on the ground at their feet and holding the glass full of plum wine to her lips in contemplation. "I've never been either, I think."

"Never? I hear it's your vision that's affected the most."

"I must be neither, in that case."

"Oh? No seeing double?"

"If I were, it wouldn't be terrible." With that, she sufficiently catches him off guard, and a smirk forms behind the glass.

"You say that now. Watch, come morning you won't be able to stand the sight of me."

"Why is that?"

"Typically after a rousing night of inebriation, you wake with a pain worse than any blow to the head."

Her smirk dims at his explanation, and for a brief moment she wonders if the Joining Ritual was a form of inebriation. Imagining that goblet filled with darkspawn blood turns her off from further indulging in the alcohol, and she tosses the wine aside without further thought. The wine splashes into the firepit and douses the weakening flames.

"Oh, that's nice."


	4. Rain

That night, Cecilia wasn't as opposed to the fire heating up her face as she had been in the past. She sat juxtaposed to Morrigan in silence, chin resting on the knees she hugged to her chest. The others remained on the other side of camp, and one in particular held her attention better than the flames ever had.

"Do you realize you have been smiling for hours now?"

She blinked, robbed of her lack of thought the moment her companion broke the silence. "Have I?" she asked, almost confused as she turns her gaze.

"Since you and that fool, Alistair, last shot glances at each other -" and it's then that Cecilia's grin broadened and she hid it behind her knees. Before Morrigan can finish the thought, she cuts herself off with a noise of disgust. The sky had split in two, dropping a sudden downpour upon them.

She had once enjoyed the rain and the private moments of solitude it provided, but now it was suffocating her as much as it was the fire pit.

The camp fires did not last through the night.


	5. A Vase

Howe is dead and it brings her no peace or satisfaction as she thought it would. If anything, it left her bitter anger more intense.

She grips the mantle as she stares at the blazing fireplace within her room at Arl Eamon's estate. Watches as the flames shift back and forth with no purpose, its consumption both endless and limited. She hates her sense of relation to it.

A moment later she takes the vase from the mantle, rips away it floral arrangement, and maliciously throws out the water into the fire, snuffing it out of existence. She drops the flowers and vase and they land with a clatter to the ground before she hears the door open behind her.


	6. The Dark Ritual

Cecilia sat on the cold stone floor, back pressed against the side of a perfectly serviceable bed. The only source of light in the room came flickering from the fireplace.

For the last year and a half, she had experienced the fairytale adventure story she had always dreamed of as a child. For the last year and a half, she had been disillusioned by her continued existence. After the night she watched her father's portrait burn, she had nothing and no one for whom to live, and learning of the Grey Warden's sacrifice just an hour prior almost came as some relief.

Except two of the most important people in her fractured life were in the other room, having come together despite their hatred for one another because they wanted her to live. The notion wracked her with regret, fearing as though she was forcing them into it for something she wasn't entirely sure she wanted for herself. Rationally, she understood that Morrigan had motivations separate from herself and that Alistair would be granted the same chance for survival, yet it did nothing to assuage her guilt.

Cecilia eventually fell asleep where she sat on the floor, unbothered by the crackling fire still burning on through the night. Came morning, she almost felt a different person.


End file.
